The present disclosure is concerned with a validation of a configuration description of automated devices in a power network such as a Substation
Automation (SA)
system, or of a part or component thereof such as an individual
Intelligent Electronic Device (IED), that is extended beyond the mere
XML schema validation as provided by the known SCL-validation tools. In particular, the disclosure introduces
machine-based validation of notations, requirements and / or conventions to be respected by the configuration description and / or the SA
system, but not incorporated in or represented by the standardized
syntax of the
XML schema as defined in part 6 of the IEC 61850 standard. To this end, notations, requirements and / or conventions are initially converted into, or defined as, extended or augmented rules encoded in computer readable format. The content or information of a file having an Substation Configuration description Language (SCL) compliant description of an SA
system, or of a part or component there of, is then read by
parsing the file and checked for conformance to the rules. Any inconsistency, error, wrong configuration or insufficient description found is displayed to a user, who may then correct the content or information in the file. The procedure according to the disclosure can contribute, in an automated manner, to the
correctness of the description of a Substation
Automation (SA) system beyond the pure syntactical adherence to the IEC 61850 standard.